Thursday, October 4, 2012

On Mists of Pandaria and Female Model Designs

Some great articles I ran across here that I thought I'd share.

First, this article at 6D is slightly dated but many of the sentiments within were shared by my wife when she tried the Mists of Pandaria beta earlier this year...it was enough of a deterrent that this is the first World of Warcraft supplement that she didn't pick up on midnight of release and in fact she shocked me by indicating that she didn't want it. At All. Whoa. She's sticking to Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2, instead. I, of course, have eschewed WoW entirely now in favor of Rift and GW2 (albeit for slightly different reasons than my wife).* I guess the slow change is starting to bubble up to the surface.

Rho at The Border House then discusses the ethos of design in female models, contrasting two very different takes on how to do it by demonstrating some of the underlying problems evident in Bioware's pool of artists (for anyone who's ever been bothered by the fact that the Asari are so demonstrably female in a human sense, here is why) and then contrasting it with just how impressive and interesting the charr of Guild Wars 2 are. It's an interesting example of how sometimes it's all a matter of attitude and approach when it comes to intelligent art design.

C'mon Bioware, even the comic artists could figure out a way to make female Turians work. I like how this image plays off of the avian element, that Turian men are more pronouncedly spiky and the females, like avians on Earth, are remarkably functional and plain.

Female charr. Anyone who has cats knows that there's an incredibly subtle but distinct difference between male and female cats, especially in the eyes; I like how they have managed to capture a variation of that essence in charr.

On other news: one of my wife's many, many guild mates kindly gifted her a copy of Borderlands 2. My wife was delighted to at last own a game that I didn't...! I just can't bring myself to pick it up. Borderlands the first was fun for a while but I burned out on it long before finishing the campaign or exploring the DLC; the story elements were mostly front-loaded and brief in that game, and if Yahtzee's review is anything to go by the sequel doesn't do it any differently, which is a terrible shame. I like the look of the Borderlands universe, but it's a hollow experience outside of shooting and gear management. It's been likened to Diablo, but Diablo III has a demonstrably more interesting and engaging story experience that Borderlands did. Not a good thing for someone like me. Easier to just keep playing other games on my roster that deserve attention--like, say, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning or even Rage.

Speaking of Rage, talk about a game that jumped the shark. Not even 6 hours in and it springs this whole "us vs. the evil faceless empire" out of the blue on me. Someone in the scripting dept. for that game apparently has never heard of foreshadowing. We'll see if I get back to it anytime soon. With my drive to get somewhere in Rift and Resident Evil 6....we shall see.

The important thing is that in a million years, when the brain-worms of Arcturus IX have annihilated us throughout the galaxy, there will be no surviving recordings of blogs to be found by the cephalopods that evolve to replace us. In this way will their civilization advance and prosper.